About

¡Hola! I’m a staff writer for The Orange County Register, covering Santa Ana, the county seat and among the only municipalities with an entirely Latino City Council, transportation and multicultural issues across the region. I was fortunate enough to grow up near Los Angeles speaking Spanish, Cantonese and English, in that order, and frequently use all three languages in my reporting. Since 2010, I have received 20 journalism awards and recognitions.

Previously, I wrote for The San Francisco Examiner and my stories on evictions and the housing crisis, transportation and a sports feature on the Golden State Warriors won regional journalism awards in 2014 and 2015. On the transit beat, I trailed Google buses, talked my way into exclusive access for the Central Subway tunnel drilling breakthrough and got several scoops on the struggling taxi industry’s moves against Uber and other mobile app-based ride services. I focused on neighborhoods including Chinatown and the Mission district, where my language skills gave me insights into the lives of people who do not speak English.

Before joining The S.F. Examiner and returning to English-language media, I had the unique opportunity to help launch the first Spanish-language regional sports network, Time Warner Cable Deportes, covering the Los Angeles Lakers. Besides being a coordinating producer for all Lakers home games, I wrote stories in for Time Warner Cable SportsNet and produced #LAPREPA, an original weekly show on Latino high school athletes that has been recognized with a Los Angeles Area Emmy Award.

I was the first Asian reporter for La Opinión in Los Angeles, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the U.S., and covered crime and communities including Compton, where Latinos fought to elect a candidate of their race to the all-African-American city council. My series on Latino and black race relations in the city council won a José Martí Publishing Award from the National Association of Hispanic Publications in 2012.

As a Hearst Fellow, I covered city hall for The San Francisco Chronicle and followed an undocumented student who faced deportation through his calls from a detention center. My stories case garnered national attention on social media, led Senator Dianne Feinstein to block his deportation and won first place in the East Bay Press Club Excellence in Print Journalism Awards in 2010. I spent the other half of my Hearst Fellowship at the San Antonio-Express News covering crime, courts and the Occupy San Antonio movement.

My byline has also appeared in Forbes, El Mensajero, The Compton Herald, Oakland Local, Berkeleyside, SFBay.ca, Patch.com, El Mercurio de Manta in Ecuador and The Daily Californian. In 2014, I was selected as a New York Times Fellow in “The Changing Face of America: Immigration and the Politics of Reform” conference at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

I’m particularly good at building rapport with community sources and highlighting the human side of an issue, and interested in the evolution of cities and culture.

Aside from my full-time reporting duties, I wrote Spanish-language content for the San Francisco Giants’ “Página Gigante” in El Mensajero during the 2014 season, and continue to cover professional sports teams as a freelancer.

Thanks for reading!

Welcome. Bienvenidos. 欢迎.

I'm a journalist based in Southern California, reporting in English, Spanish and Cantonese for The Orange County Register. My beats are the city of Santa Ana, which is the county seat, and transportation. Occasionally I write about sports. Half of my professional career has been spent in Spanish-language media. I was the first Asian reporter for La Opinión, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the U.S., and helped launch, write and produce for Time Warner Cable Deportes, the country's first regional sports network in Spanish.
My award-winning work includes series on an undocumented student whose deportation was blocked by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Latinos' struggle for political power in Compton and an evicted family who became the face of San Francisco's housing crisis. I've completed fellowships with The New York Times and Hearst Newspapers and my byline has appeared as far away as Ecuador.
谢谢. Gracias. Thank you for stopping by.